Credit

Restrictions:

Editorial use only.

Caption

Apollo 17 recovery ship and descent. Aerial then shipboard footage showing the recovery ship and then the Command Module of the Apollo 17 spacecraft descending by parachute towards splashdown in the southern Pacific Ocean on 19 December 1972. The recovery ship is the USS Ticonderoga. The three NASA astronauts on board the Command Module (Eugene Cernan, Ron Evans and Harrison Schmitt) were returning from their lunar mission, where Cernan and Schmitt had been the last humans to walk on the Moon in what was the final Apollo mission. Splashdown occurred at 19:24 UTC. The astronauts were retrieved by a rescue helicopter and were on board the recovery ship 52 minutes later.